


The Stowaway

by Masu_Trout



Category: The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Gen, Ghost Stories, Ghosts, Robot Friendships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-27 01:02:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12570176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masu_Trout/pseuds/Masu_Trout
Summary: I wasn't even worried. That, I think, was my first mistake.Far outside of Corporation Rim, Murderbot meets a cargo bot with a strange story to tell.





	The Stowaway

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vass/gifts).



I was well out of Corporation Rim by now, far away from either GrayCris' retribution or the Preservation Alliance's attempts at rehabilitation. In fact, I hadn't seen a human being for fifteen days. My life had been distilled into a simple three-step process:

 _Step One,_ sneak onto a commercial spaceport and ply a cargo bot going my direction (or, rather, my lack of direction—my thought processes were all focused on getting _away away away_ ) into allowing me to stow aboard their transport.

Step Two, make my way into the ship without being seen by either humans or Guardbot workers.

 _Step Three,_ travel to next spaceport, repeat steps 1-3.

By now, I was starting to be able to guess which parts of my extensive library would be asked after at each stop. _Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon_ was a popular choice, as was the objectively inferior _Life on Planet 7_ , an absurd historical drama with a costume budget twice the size of its script budget.

To each their own, I suppose. Personally, I've never understood the appeal—my clothes are as bland and nondescript as possible, and that's exactly how I want it.

(Most of them didn't even skip the sex scenes, which I still can't profess to understand. None of the cargo transport bots even have organic bits to stimulate.)

I was getting about as far out as it was possible to get on commercial transit; the only things out this way were old, used-up mining planets and barren little rocks being sold to surveyors for bargain prices. I had no intention of staying—my anonymity is directly proportional to the number of more-interesting-looking humans around—but it was an important part of the plan. Once I'd fallen completely off the radar, I could emerge somewhere unexpected and then begin my life as a fully uninteresting human being who no one would ever feel the need to talk to.

(Okay, so it wasn't exactly a long-term plan—for one, it depended on me not getting my organics blown off in some freak accident, and for another it depended on me not flubbing a routine conversation so badly that my identity as a not-quite-killer robot would be immediately revealed—but it was what I had. The fact that I'm able to think ahead at all puts me head and shoulders above every other SecUnit currently in circulation.)

I already had my target for this next leg of the trip: a cargo transport bot, some seventy years in circulation and running the same tired loop from mining station to mining station for fifty of those years. I needed a ride, and it most _definitely_ needed some form of distraction. I wasn't even worried.

That, I think, was my first mistake.

When I saw the cargo bot's reply to my first polite ping, I think I might have groaned out loud. At the very least I know I made some sort of horrible face; five weeks straight of space travel had improved my understanding of _Sanctuary Moon_ 's deeper intricacies tenfold, but it'd done less than nothing for my ability to control my facial expressions.

(Every day I wish for a tinted helmet. Even now I'd trade away the flesh of my right arm for one, and I don't even have a cubicle to heal in.)

These sorts of bots don't talk like people do. The message was in machine code, a sort of psuedo-language created for us bots to communicate in quintuple time, but roughly translated into human-readable words it read: _No stories required. Do not watch TV._

It had opted to leave out pronouns. There was quite literally _no_ measurable performance difference involved in prepending the bot equivalent of an _I_ onto those two statements, and yet it had opted to leave out pronouns.

And here I'd thought I was a hard one to talk to.

I was preparing to formulate an attempt at bribery—I've heard humans occasionally ask, _What do you get someone who has everything?_ , but in my experience a more more important question is, _What do you get the robot who has nothing and wants nothing?_ —when a second message came through.

 _Will provide travel,_ it read, Require alternate payment.

I sent a dashed-off query in response to that. I had little money and no organic matter to spare, and anyway I couldn't imagine a cargo bot caring about either.

The response came quicker this time: _Wish to speak. Only that._

(Interesting fact: being human isn't a requirement for suffering from crippling boredom, and even cargo bots can want a bit of socialization every now and then. I can't imagine why, quite honestly—I know _I_ would have chosen _Sanctuary Moon_ —but at this point it didn't matter. I had no other option for transport.)

I sent off a ping, _Affirmative_ , and, transaction settled, made my way down to find the shuttle.

–

The inside of the shuttle was exactly what you might expect out of a fifty-year-old mining shuttle, which is to say dusty and grim and a little bit radioactive. At least this time I had absolutely no worries about an intruding human crew; any fully-organic creature who wandered in here would find themselves growing a third limb or (more likely) a brain tumor quickly enough.

(On Season 16, Episode 4 of _Sanctuary Moon_ , the stoic head of biology grows a third eye after getting shot protecting his lovers from an experimental and unlicensed radiation gun. I admit the concept's unlikely, but the emotional fallout was the highlight of the arc. Almost made me sad I had anti-radiation shielding.)

The cargo bot, on the other hand, was anything but what I'd expected from the terse communications. Across a local connection—me speaking to the air, it responding directly to my plugged-in mechanical port—it was as bouncy as a child and as excitable as a small wild animal. I could understand why it chose not to communicate out loud; the air wasn't capable of transmitting sound at the WPM it frequently reached.

Loneliness is a tragedy, not least because it results in _very_ chatty bots. I'd never regretted a leg of my journey more than in this moment, and I'd nearly been caught and sold back to the company no less than three separate times.

“So,” I said, interrupting a one-sided conversation that had started out being about the dimensions of the ship and turned into an explanation of the topsoil it was hauling, “is there anything in particular you wanted to talk about?”

 _Hmmm,_ said the cargo bot, _That's a very good question! What do you think about General Rokeach's latest—_

“I don't follow politics,” I said. Belatedly, I remembered to add a stumbling, “Sorry.”

_Ah. No, that's fine. Then, did you hear about the results of the Bains Poetry Awards last month?_

“…I don't follow celebrities either.” This time I didn't add the sorry; the cargo bot would be able to hear it in my voice.

 _Okay._ There was a moment's silence, suddenly eerie after the constant bombardment of chatter. _What do you do, then?_

“I watch soap operas. I kill people. Sometimes I stop people from being killed, though in my experience that still involves killing other people.”

 _Oh_. There was another unsettling silence. It occurs to me only now that it must have pitied me.

“You could watch a soap opera,” I offered, “and then we could talk about it.”

_…No, I'd rather not. I don't really like fiction much. ___

__Poor taste, in my opinion, but before I could say as much it was speaking again._ _

___Then, how about I tell you a story?_ _ _

__“That's fine,” I said. At least a story wouldn't involve me having to come up with ways to contribute to the conversation. “What kind of story?”_ _

__If it'd had a mouth, I think it might have smiled. _A ghost story, of course. It's the only kind we know out here.__ _

__–_ _

__The story it told took a long, long time, even communicating as fast as the cargo bot did, and transliterating it would be beyond me; my language processors are as cheap as the rest of my circuits. You want administrative work done, you don't hire a bot with blades in its arms._ _

__I remember, though, that it went something like this:_ _

__Three hundred years ago, give or take, when the shuttles were slower and the signals took much longer to go from planet to planet, a young woman stowed away with a mining town's cargo._ _

__( _Someone much like you,_ the cargo bot had said, which I remember only because of how funny it was. I've been called many things, but never before has someone accused me of being similar to a three-hundred-years-dead human. I suppose all vaguely organic beings must look alike to something like a cargo transport bot.)_ _

__She'd been fleeing her family, ready to escape their petty cruelty at any cost, and it wasn't until she'd felt the pressure change that signaled deep space that she realized what she'd locked herself in with._ _

__Three tons of highly illegal, highly deadly ore rattled within the slats of the crates stacked all around her. Reactive, toxic, monstrous material, a single chunk of the rock left in the smallest pond or river could spill poison into a planet's water table for thousands of years._ _

__(I'd heard of the ore before. The company used to use it to power some of their space probes, back before environmental hazard lawsuits got too costly.)_ _

__It was harmless enough without anything to react to. If she'd stayed still for three days, with cloth wrapped over her mouth to prevent moisture getting into the air and her whole being focused on staying calm enough not to let the slightest drop of sweat escape her pores, she might have been able to walk off that ship._ _

__Others would have died, though. Many, many others for many, many years. And so the stowaway pulled out her canteen and poured it onto the ground and counted down the seconds until everything she knew would end._ _

___They say the explosion was the brightest thing ever to grace this galaxy,_ the cargo transport bot said then, _that people planets away thought a new sun was being formed right in front of their eyes.__ _

__“That's…” Horrifying, I didn't say, and a little bit silly besides. Surely it wouldn't burn _that_ bright? “Fascinating.” _ _

__I understand why others might find comfort in stories of death, but I've never been able to share the feeling. Perhaps it's because I've come so close to death so many times myself and all I've ever felt was in pain and annoyed. “But why did you say it was a ghost story? It just sounds like… a corpse story.”_ _

___Ah,_ said the cargo bot, _that's the thing. She comes back, even now, when a ship has had a stowaway on board. Not yet, mind you—not before this leg of your journey is finished. But someday, on some other ship, you'll turn a corner and you'll see her waiting for you.__ _

__“And then what?” I asked._ _

__The cargo bot gave me the mental equivalent of a shrug. _Who knows?__ _

__“…Then how do you know it happens at all?”_ _

___It does. Everyone knows_._ _

__I didn't tell the cargo bot how absurd that was, because saying so would have been rude and I've been learning a few things about manners now that I don't have a helmet to hide behind. I only gave the bot the feed-linked equivalent of a shrug. “Let's talk about something else, then.” I didn't want to, but—“You can tell me all about the poetry awards, if you want.”_ _

__That was a much safer topic of conversation, because it allowed the cargo bot to talk a lot and me to stay completely silent. For the next eight hours, I sat and listened to a breakdown of dress lengths and recitation styles and did not— _did not_ —think one bit about a stowaway and a cargo hold full of ore._ _

__(If I didn't rest well that night, if my recuperation period was marred by the sound of water dripping and the anticipation of waiting and the glow of a newly-birthed sun, then that was only because my governor was hung up on the absurdity of such a tale.)_ _

__–_ _

__The next morning, I left the care of the cargo transport bot and the faintly-radioactive cargo hold. I've no idea whether it was going to miss the company or if it was simply happy to see such dull conversation leave, but either way it gave me a cheery enough goodbye as I began to unplug myself from the shuttle's charging station._ _

__(Of course, included in that goodbye was, _try not to let the stowaway get you!_ , so it wasn't quite as positive a parting as it could have been.)_ _

__On the threshold of the shuttle's exit, I paused. I told myself I was being absurd, I told myself that any proper SecUnit would be embarrassed to act this way, and then I went ahead and opened my stupid mouth and asked, “Shuttle?”_ _

___Yes?_ _ _

__Out of range of direct connection, it had gone back to being taciturn. I had no idea what the reason behind that was, and it had never occurred to me to ask during the ride._ _

__(Again: Murderbot. Not exactly wired for small talk.)_ _

__“Is there… is there any way to _stop_ the stowaway coming after you?”_ _

___Of course_ , it messaged me. Five whole characters more than the previous sentence; I was moving up in importance._ _

__“And what might that be?”_ _

___Simple. Talk about her._ _ _

__“…Talk?” I asked. “We did that already, didn't we?” It was a bit of a self-defeating ghost story, then, if hearing it made you safe from it, but it was low-effort and I liked that about it._ _

__A long, long pause, and then, _To someone else. Who hasn't heard of her._ If a message could have packed in the essence of exasperation alongside the bytes, I think the cargo bot would have sent it. _She died alone. Unloved. Tell someone who doesn't know. Have them tell someone else. Let her live in your memories.__ _

__“Huh.” So it was a self-perpetuating story, then. I had to admire the ingenuity, as silly as it all was._ _

__And yet—_ _

__And yet and yet and _yet_ —_ _

__I have traveled three ships since then, and each corner I turned I half-expected to see her. It's funny the things that get into your head, and I would love to blame my hacked governor for the entirely absurd emotions I've been feeling, but the truth is this: I once spent seventy-three hours listening to the same song over and over again. If I had functioning tear ducts, I would have cried over _Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon_ two hundred and forty-four times. (I've kept count.)_ _

__We don't choose the stories that we hold onto, or the things that get stuck in our heads._ _

__So, to you who's reading this now: perhaps I passed this on to you when I offered forty-two seasons of a soap opera as payment for my passage aboard your ship. Perhaps you've no idea who I am, and you were sent this by someone else entirely. Perhaps you've no idea what a Murderbot even _is_._ _

__Regardless, please understand that I'm taking a great risk by writing this much about myself. (Please understand that I'm only doing this because I lack the essential creativity to come up with a fake story about the stowaway—again, Murderbot, not Litbot. Even an eight-hour lecture couldn't get me any closer to understanding how to write my own poetry, so fiction was right out.) Don't pass this along to humans, or to anyone who'd have an interest in letting the company know about a misplaced piece of merchandise they might be able to scoop up and resell. Don't pass it along if you don't want to._ _

__But if you walk into a room or switch between camera views and wonder for even a moment whether you might be about to find someone waiting for you… pass it along. Tell someone a story about a dead person who might never have existed at all._ _

__Perhaps it will help._ _

**Author's Note:**

> Trying for a bit of supernatural weirdness here, so here's a futuristic take on the creepypasta concept. Hope you enjoy!


End file.
